


DING

by Chekhov



Category: Pocket Monsters SPECIAL | Pokemon Adventures, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Chatlogs, Chatting & Messaging, Flirting, Implied Relationships, M/M, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-22
Updated: 2012-11-22
Packaged: 2017-11-19 05:52:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/569854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chekhov/pseuds/Chekhov
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ash has finally grown up past the age of 10 - but that doesn't mean that he isn't up to his next biggest challenge - bugging the everliving fuck out of an overworked, underpaid young scientist Gary Oak at 3AM via Instant Messaging. Could there be a hidden motive behind his pestering...?</p>
            </blockquote>





	DING

**Author's Note:**

> Setting: Mildly AU-ish, in the future. Gary is 20 - all others go unmentioned.

Ding. 

The young man lifted his sharp chin, adjusted the crooked black-frame glasses on his elegant nose, and gazed at his laptop, merely a foot away from his eyes, which were well-used to the abuse they received over various hours in front of the monitor. Placed neatly in the middle of the glowing screen was a chat-window with only a few frank words on the invisible lines: 

**“you have no life gary oak.”**

Gary Oak, after considering this statement, rumpled his brown hair off to the side of his face, scratched warily at his ear and then moved his thin fingers onto the keyboard, responding in his own simple way – **“Please expand your supportive argument for such an accusation.”** Afterwards, he lowered his eyes to the book in his lap again and licked his finger before catching the corner of the page and flipping it over. The words, illuminated only by the laptop’s light, appeared to dance away from him, and even as he skimmed the paragraphs none of the information in them seemed to stick around. His head felt utterly empty and cluttered at the same time. 

_… the possibility of such a failure in the mechanism may as well be attributed to the Pokeball’s design; especially to the placement of the laser which, in recently remodeled Time Balls has been affixed to the top part near the molecule accelerator. This issue, which was first noted in an essay by Constantine Ruther has been since a growing source of debate in…_

Ding.

With a wayward sigh Gary glanced up again, reading the new message. 

**“it’s three o-clock in the morning, dumbass, there is no argument. what the hell are you doing sitting at your computer like a wilted little flower??”**

At this he had to chuckle – _a wilted flower_. His converser seemed to have a rather strange taste in similes, especially since Gary had never thought of himself as a floral sort of person. At the ripe age of 20 he was still taller than most of his peers, it was true, but he wasn’t wimpy, and his shoulders were broad and sunburned from the fieldwork he did out in the country. His hair still had a mind of its own, but it in no way resembled a flower – more like a collection of Pigey feathers atop a wiry tree. A young Oak – ha, what a riot. 

**“I’d like to point out that you, too, are currently demonstrating a lack of a ‘life’ by being online at these early hours. Unless of course you’re doing something more productive than I am?”** he challenged, smiling a little bit as he tapped out the comeback. 

The answer was momentary. 

Ding. **“well maybe i am.”**

Gary’s thin lips stretched into a broad grin as he felt the tiny spark in his chest light up. The joy of the battlefield of the bickering that he had not quite given up, just like a drug, never failed to send him into his attack mode. **“Ash, porn is not productive.”**

He lifted his book again, but he was only watching the IM from behind his glasses, not actually reading anymore. The answer of his old rival was much more interesting to him than the deadline for the catch-rate report. His intern work could be done in the morning, when all of this wasn’t half as amusing as it was now.

Ding. **“I WASN’T!!!”** Ash whacked out from his end, the anger quite apparent even without his annoyed voice to carry the message.

**“Right. Is it a blonde?”** Gary smirked, imagining Ash’s face – fuming with anger. How many times had he been on the receiving end of that face? Lined with sharp, dark hair and equally sharp eyes. Just like everything else that Ash had grown into, like his calloused hands and his deepened voice (which still had the vocabulary of a ten-year-old), his fury only seemed to develop. Oftentimes Gary wondered who was a bigger influential factor in the relationship between the trainer and his Pikachu. The latter certainly seemed more trained and friendly now that it was out of the hands of his grandfather, but on the other hand Ash appeared to crackle with electricity every time someone crossed the line of his so-called dignity.

But Ash wasn’t even answering – the chat-box remained strangely empty, and Gary was almost disappointed. No, the fight couldn’t end this early. He knew Ash still had buttons that could be pushed. **“Or maybe…”** he tapped out, **“… a red-head?”**

When the box finally dinged a few seconds later the answer was surprisingly un-caps-locked. **“actually its a brunette.”**

The chair squeaked as Gary leaned back, tilting his head up to stare at his ceiling, folding his hands over his stomach, feeling his lips stretch even wider until he was laughing softly, the chuckles bursting somewhere in his abdomen and evolving as they traveled through his body. Then, immediately he was back to his usual crouch over the keyboard, cackling evilly as he responded to the very thing Ash had left himself wide-open for. **“I’m flattered.”**

Ding. **“you wish"**

Ding. **“you egotistical bastard”**

Ding. **“its not you”**

Ding. **“as if”**

Gary snorted and rolled his eyes, rubbing his shoulders, which were becoming sore from the strain that chair was putting on his bent back. **“Would you like to buy a period?”** he asked, wishing there was a style for sarcasm. **“Or maybe a few capitalized letters?”**

There was a pause. Then – ding. **“Fuck you.”**

**“If you’d like to, then maybe you shouldn’t make such grand efforts to deny it.”**

Ding. **“is that the best youve got?”**

Gary pursed his lips, unhappy with the lack of capitalized lettering and erratic misspellings that would usually indicate that he’d successfully angered the other. He moved his hand up, pushing the glasses higher up on his nose and then traced the spacebar with his middle finger contemplatively. _You nerd,_ Ash had teased him the very first time he’d discovered that Gary wore contacts only when he had to go out for battles. At home his sight was aided by the lenses he had on now which, according to the other man, made him appear much less cool than everyone had originally thought he was. _I think that if I ever had to go up in battle against you and you wore those things I’d lose just because I was laughing so hard._

It was embarrassing to admit, but this ticked Gary off. The stupid idiot really had no right to harass what helped him see better. Especially not when he was still clinging to that stupid hat from his childhood like a security blanket. _‘You’d better take that off, then,’_ Gary had retorted, _‘because if my glasses crack you up, then I might as well be truthful and tell you that your hat gives me nightmares. It’s epitome of stupidity haunts me at night.’_

**“I thought you said you weren’t looking at porn.”** It was a lame comeback, but for the moment he didn’t really have anything else to say. His attempts at embarrassing the other were falling flat. Maybe he was losing his touch.

Ding. **“im not.”**

**“Then who’s the brunette?”**

Ding. **“wouldnt you like to know”**

This conversation wasn’t really going anywhere, and yet the young Oak felt strangely compelled to continue it. How many times had he done this – this irresponsible manner of pushing his work aside to chat with a friend? He could count it on his two hands, and they probably wouldn’t even be full.

A few feet away, the bedsprings creaked. Claws clicked in the hallway outside of his door, fading away downstairs. Like his grandfather Gary liked to have a house full of Pokémon that were able to wander freely. The soft clacking of Fearow’s beak in the middle of the morning, or Umbreon’s hungry croon from the door – these noises defined his life. And also work – lots and lots of it, anything that he could get his hands on. _‘Why do you bother?’_ Ash once asked. _‘Why not go out and enjoy life?’_

But Gary was enjoying his life. He was content to be where he was. Certainly more content than he’d been a few days ago.

**“I’d like to know what it is you’re doing at 3:35 am on a Tuesday night, bothering me online when tomorrow you have an important tournament to attend. Since, from my previous observations I can safely assume that sleep is one of your most favorite activities, then I must also induce that you are sacrificing it for something significantly more important. If chattering with me isn’t of great matter to you then I must conclude that it must be something else, and the only thing that might dominate your interest would be porn.”** He jabbed the ‘send’ button almost too harshly, but of course it didn’t matter any – the message appeared on Ash’s screen with the same innocent sound, not at all relating his frustrations to the other.

There was a moment of contemplation over this – which Gary assumed Ash was using up looking through an online dictionary, or maybe re-reading the entire paragraph several times over with a scowl on his face.

Ding.

Or maybe he was just thinking of the best insult that he could deliver without actually having to pretend that he attempted to read what Gary had written. **“and you think porn is worse than boring intern work?**

Gary snorted and pushed his book out of his lap. Cracking his knuckles a few times beforehand he then settled in, this time with a real intent, deciding that if he was going to set himself a goal he might as well devote his entire psyche to it instead of trying to multitask. **“You don’t know that I’m not looking at porn."**

Ding. **“I know you. you get off on reading algarythms. biology lectures probably make you hard.”**

**“You’ve obviously never read up on pokemon breeding habits. They’re kinky little creatures.”** Gary hammered out in merciless reply.

A moment of obvious shock, and then the expected ding. **“ew. dont need to know that.”**

**“And algorithms, which is how they’re spelled, by the way, are also rather sexy. And when you get into trigonometry... Sin and cosin… that is, cooperative sinning. Usually when that happens you start getting into the area of handcuffs and body chocolate, you know…”**

Ding. **“im really glad i DONT know actually. nerd sex isnt exactly arousing to me.”**

**“You’re a terrible liar. Then why are you imagining yourself trying to solve a calculus problem as someone licks your nipples?”**

Ding. **“seriously? how do you come up with that stuff? that’s not even possible.”**

**“If it exists, there’s porn of it. Just trust me – apparently a hot scientist trying to get Pokémon blood samples as she’s being taken from behind over a laboratory table is the new fetish.”**

Ding. **“wouldnt that be kinda uncomfortable???”**

Gary smirked. **“A little discomfort can be rather arousing, can’t it, Ash?”**

It was no real surprise that the other hesitated in answering. But then, taking the frustratingly easy way out, the rival changed the conversation again: **“i dont believe you.”**

**“About what?”**

Ding. **“about the nerd porn. no one in their right mind would possibly think up of something like that.”**

**“Actually, I’m watching a video right now. Want me to describe it to you?”**

No dinging, no answer. Gary smirked and waited a couple of seconds before beginning to type again. **“He’s wearing a labcoat and so is she, and there’s moonstones in the glass case behind them, and he flicks off the lights and walks towards her as she’s bent over the desk, writing down a long equation in her rush to finish the unsolvable theorem of the Pokeball linkage system and…”**

Initially, Gary had meant to keep going but suddenly realized that it wasn’t necessary. Two seconds after he sent the first tempting message his bed creaked again, protesting loudly as it released the weight that had been holding it down. Hurried footsteps thudded on the hardwood floors behind him and in moments Ash’s cold fingers clamped down on his shoulders as the dark-haired man leaned in to glare at his laptop.

“You liar,” he said. “You’re not watching nerd-porn. This is your spreadsheet.”

Gary smirked triumphantly and closed the chat window. “Neither are you.”

“I couldn’t sleep and was checking my emails – what’s your excuse?” The fingers left his shoulder but Ash remained standing close, the smooth skin of his naked abdomen pushing into Gary’s back.

“My excuse is that you interrupted my work at the most inopportune moment last night. I don’t like to leave things unfinished, you know that,” he returned with a polite smile which had hints of evil shining through his teeth as he tilted it up to let his rival catch a glimpse of it.

“Hmph.” Ash gave him his least amused look and then crossed his arms over his bare chest, demonstrating his remaining self-consciousness with being unclothed around the other, although by now it shouldn’t have mattered – Ash had a tendency of acting completely uninterested in sex in moments when he most wanted it, and their get-togethers always ended messily, in the best way. “It doesn’t matter,” the trainer muttered now. “That’s not what I wanted to tell you. You have a really dirty mind you creep – are you really working or are you writing some sort of porno script?”

“Last time I checked you enjoyed my dirty mind,” Gary told him with a soft laugh. “If I recall correctly, you enjoy it so much that you pick up some vocabulary terms that usually only contain four letters. Like ‘fuck’ or ‘more’ or both of those.”

“Oh shut up,” Ash snorted. “You’re not too intelligent yourself when you’re distracted with other things. Let’s see you recite your stupid algorithm next time when–"

“When we’re fucking over a lab table?”

“Maybe.” Ash sounded reserved but by now Gary knew better where to look for answers – Ash’s body. And he was sure as hell that it wasn’t Ash’s Pokedex that was poking him in the back of his ribs.

“Alright, then maybe without the algorithm… but the table sounds like a fun idea, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Ash said again, and wrapped one of his arms loosely around Gary’s neck, leaning against him as he gazed into the other’s laptop, which was still showing the rambles of the latest report. They were silent for a moment, and then he continued; “You should wear your glasses. Then it’d be nerd sex.”

“I thought you didn’t like my glasses,” Gary said, slightly startled. “What happened to your morals, Ash Ketchum?”

“Don’t ask me – you’ve hidden them somewhere and I can’t find them,” Ash said, his lips set in a quiet smile. His grip on Gary’s neck tightened slightly, almost choking but still playful, the first awkward stages of a relationship between two people who didn’t know how to do anything else besides bicker. But, Gary figured, that wasn’t so bad. With a bit of work and maybe spellcheck they’d get through it.

And, if he had his way, by this time next month they could try algorithms.


End file.
